The present invention relates to systems and methods for responsible sustainable management of renewable water resources, including groundwater.
Given the need to conserve water resources to sustain both increasing human consumption and agriculture indefinitely, when combined with unpredictability of climate conditions and a growing need for food, sustainable groundwater management has become a critical and essential component of a long term solution to the water resource management.
The management of water resources is often further complicated by a complex mapping of jurisdictional boundaries corresponding to multiple surface water management agencies that haphazardly cross over the boundaries of the naturally occurring groundwater basins, which commonly contain one or more aquifers. In some geographical areas, intensive groundwater pumping, often dramatically increasing during extended periods of drought, have resulted in the water table dropping substantially—sometimes causing permanent loss of aquifer capacity, which further exacerbates the critical urgency of attaining sustainable water resource management. In some areas of California's central valley, surface subsidence due to aquifer collapse has been reported—nearly 2 inches per month in some locations according to NASA.
Groundwater is essentially distributed by the aquifer, which often is accessed on a patchwork basis due to the large cost of drilling wells. In contrast, surface water may be distributed using natural and manmade water courses that may provide a much more uniform, widespread and measurable distribution of water. Private access to and depletion of groundwater goes largely unmeasured, unmetered and unregulated. Such an inequitable and unsustainable free-for-all situation is often referred to as “the tragedy of the commons”. Hence, delaying implementation of comprehensive water resource management is not an option, if long-term sustainability is to be accomplished.
A typical water agency has a specific geographic district over which it has authority. The boundaries of an agency's district may correspond to the boundaries of a surface water basin or can be more arbitrarily based on political boundaries such as municipal, county, state, provincial or international borders. Water agencies seldom have boundaries fully encompassing an underlying aquifer or aquifers. More often, multiple water agencies overlie different portions of a single aquifer. Additionally, one or more water consumers within an agency's district may have water rights that are senior to or separate from the agency's. In many instances, a water agency combines pumped groundwater with surface water supplies. Additionally, a water agency may have customers that are pumping groundwater from private unmetered wells and using it in conjunction with water supplied from the water agency. In addition to water consumers—agricultural and municipal—a groundwater basin may have many additional stakeholders such as, politicians, government officials, lobbyists, community organizations, scientists, water brokers, and right of way holders. All of these complexities make coherent sustainable management of a groundwater basin extremely difficult.
Consequently, in order to effectively sustainably manage a groundwater basin, either a single agency needs to have authority over the entire basin; or multiple agencies overlying parts of that basin need to cooperate to provide coordinated management that in combination results in combined authority over the entire basin. Problematically, many basins have private (and often unmetered) groundwater users with senior or otherwise independent water rights. Perhaps the most direct solution to such a “Gordian Knot” problem is legislation that modifies and subsumes such prior private rights under the authority of a water agency (or cooperating water agencies) with the mandate to locate, monitor, measure, charge fees for, and/or otherwise regulate and limit private extraction of groundwater. But such a legal mandate is not sufficient. Outreach to and cooperation from stakeholders is also needed—a very high hurdle for a new agency.
Regardless of the solution—multiple agencies operating independently but cooperatively, multiple agencies cooperating in concert as a virtual basin-wide agency, or a single basin-wide agency replacing multiple agencies—a system for operating a single basin-wide management capability is necessary. Nowadays, complex combinations of computerized database systems have become the functional heart of most businesses including water agencies. Such systems—typically commercially sourced—are often highly proprietary and difficult to interoperate with competitive commercial solutions. Replacing multiple such complex computerized systems with an equally capable replacement computerized system may be nightmarishly difficult—witness the bring-up of the Federal “Obamacare” Health Care Insurance Exchange.
It is therefore apparent that an urgent need exists for a sustainable water agency management platform (WAMP). This improved WAMP must enable primary stakeholders—property manager(s) (e.g., farmers) and water agency sustainability manager(s)—to cooperatively, efficiently and cost-effectively manage the consumption of groundwater resources in a sustainable manner over a long term. Additionally, a WAMP must make it practical for multiple agencies combined or working cooperatively within a groundwater basin to operate utilizing a single common WAMP that provides a practical upgrade path from legacy operations systems. Such a WAMP must replace or integrate the capabilities of legacy operations systems, but also provide essential new capabilities such as regulating unmetered groundwater extraction.